Reti sociotecniche e vita quotidiana Uno studio sul malfunzionamento tecnologicoe le dinamiche sociali nell'ospedale Sant'Anna di Ferrara

In this work I will deal with the subject of the society-technology relation by investigating some phenomena associated with a series of information systems' failures that affected an important italian hospital. I will assume (this is my starting hypothesis) that an unexpected system crash is associated with some specific social dynamics so that the failure itself can be seen as a “revealer phenomenon” that is able to show a set of shared practices, representations and rhetorics about the role of technology in everyday life. In order to verify this theory, I paid attention to the case of some serious system failures that happened at Sant'Anna Hospital of Ferrara (Italy) in 2008. By using an ethnographic research approach I interviewed 15 employees of the hospital. In order to have a good set of point of views, I chose some employees belonging to the organizational-administrative side and some others to the health one. The main results can be placed on three main levels. From a micro point of view I pointed out that the system crash was associated with some relevant phenomena concerning the individual and the relational sphere of the employees, even if with important a between the administrative employees and the health ones. Everyone asserted the absolute necessity of computers and information system, however while administrative employees assumed the importance of such technology simply as an exploitable mean, on the other side the health workers considered the same technology and the computerized objects as something more, that is as entities contributing to the construction of their own professional identity and activity. As a result, the system failure generates a greater sense of anxiety and a notable increase of social interactions as the result of the sudden creation of two new patients looking for some treatment: the health worker, assumed as an hybrid entity temporarily crippled, and the computer or the information system itself, that does not work or does not work properly. From a mesoscopic point of view, the workers constantly attempted to locate the cause of the computer crash in the process of innovation that regards the implementation of the computerized infrastructure that occurred in the last 7 years. As the outcome of that innovation process is described as the result of disputes, conflicts and negotiations between many actors, there is a common propensity to underline an association of the computer system failure with an organizational failure. Finally, from a macro point of view, the whole accounts showed to be directed towards a common perspective that assumes computer systems as a characteristic element of modernity, whose management is a prerogative of hi-tech personnel.